Samantha Lallave remembers a few years ago when her sister Priscilla fainted and had to be rushed to the hospital. Priscilla Lallave was playing softball all day in hot weather and became dehydrated. Samantha had a flashback to that Tuesday.

Priscilla Lallave, the Lewis pitcher, cruised through the first four innings. But the sun came out and the temperature was climbing toward the 80-degree mark. The wilting junior ace, who pitched a complete game a day earlier, gave up four runs in the fifth, two more in the seventh and suddenly the tying run was on second base with one out.

“All I kept saying to myself was I can do it, I can do it,” Priscilla Lallave said. “I’m not gonna let myself down. I kept pushing myself. I wasn’t putting any negative energy into me. I just kept pitching.”

Breathing heavy and with sweat glazing her face, the righthander got Susan Wagner’s Dayna Williams to ground out to Samantha at shortstop and, with the tying run on third, calmly induced Halle Siegel into a foul popup to catcher Theodora Alexandrou. No. 4 Lewis would hold on for a heart-stopping, 7-6 win over No. 5 Wagner in the PSAL Class A softball quarterfinals in Fresh Meadows.

“I’m very proud of Priscilla, because she was able to fight,” Lewis coach Bryan Brown said. “The heat all of a sudden starts draining you and she pitched yesterday. She was also batting today and she ran.”

It’ll be the first appearance for the Patriots (15-1) in the semifinals since 2004 and the Falcons (16-4) had stood in their way in two of the previous four seasons. Brown was not the coach the last time Lewis advanced to the final four, where it will play the No. 1 Tottenville-No. 8 McKee/Staten Island Tech winner Thursday. He has guided the squad to the quarterfinals in each of his six seasons, though.

“Not a monkey, a gorilla – it feels like a gorilla off my back,” Brown said. “And every year it seems that Wagner is the one that takes us out.”

Lewis got things started with its best hitting performance of the season. The typically offensively challenged Patriots rapped out seven runs on seven singles in the second and third innings. Neileni Esmeral, one of the heroes in the second round Tuesday, had two RBI hits and two runs scored to lead the charge.

“I was like, ‘Who is this team?’” Brown said. “‘Who are these girls?’ We have not hit all year and all of a sudden now we’re hitting.”

Esmeral said all the hitting practice Lewis had done finally started to pay off. But then Wagner starter Taylor Sarcone settled down, allowing just three hits the rest of the way. The Falcons batted around in the fifth and scored four runs, including star center fielder Danielle Locke’s two-RBI single.

Down three runs, Jeri Gennaro led off the top of the seventh with a single and Samantha Lallave robbed Locke of a line-drive hit with a full-extension dive to her right, which ended up being a massive out. Kristine Ciurcina reached on an error that pushed Gennaro to third and Sarcone drove both of them home with a single.

“I was a little bit nervous, but I think our whole perspective and our whole mentality was we got this,” Esmeral said. “This is ours. We’ve worked hard for this, this is ours.”

That’s when Priscilla Lallave bore down. She got Williams to bounce out and, with no margin for error because of the runner on third, induced the Siegel pop up.

“She knows what she has to do – just breathe in, breathe out, just relax,” Samantha Lallave said. “If she thinks about being tired and she feels like she’s gonna faint, all she has to do is put her mind to it, because you know the mind controls everything.”

When the game ended, the Lewis players mobbed each other around home plate. Priscilla Lallave had just enough energy left to celebrate.

“I’m tired, but pumped up and excited,” she said with a bright smile. “We’re going to the semis.”